London 2012 Olympics - will popularity impact Middle East business? (page 1 of 2)

Friday's spectacular opening ceremony cost £27 million and drew an estimated four billion viewers, proving to be the most accessible games to date. However, with dedicated TV channels, unprecedented social media buzz and streaming web video from affiliated networks, Blue Coat Systems have foreseen a negative impact on business in the region.

Enterprises will feel the impact of live and delayed video transmissions of events that users can easily access while at work, says Dave Ewart, Blue Coat's Director of Product Marketing.

"Using workplace computers or mobile devices, employees will be watching live video of their favourite sport competitions and playbacks of the events they missed. This will lead to lower network utilisation, misallocation of budget and capacity, slow or unresponsive applications and, importantly, end-user performance complaints".

As athletes from 204 nations compete for medals in 36 sports, the event has generated key storylines in the region, with athletes representing recovering Arab Spring nations and Saudi Arabia sending its first-ever female competitors. The eyes of the world will also be drawn to five Syrian sportsmen and lone female competitor, Ghfran Almouhamad, who will compete while their home nation is in turmoil.

The Olympic effect on business networks

Over the past two years, company networks have been impacted by the rising trend of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) in the workplace. Now with a host of mobile apps - both official and broadcaster affiliated - it's easier than ever before to keep up-to-date with medal tables and Olympic happenings via Apple, Android and Windows mobile devices.

But therein lies a security issue, according to Ewart: "The growth of BYOD initiatives has created a situation where IT security managers are facing a deluge of untrusted, unmanaged devices and applications on the corporate network."

The Olympics is set to generate 3,500 hours of live-streamed video, and organisations that do not have proper policies in place to deal with recreational web use may see a spike of between 30%-60% of data consumption in business hours. At a rate of 500Kbps, that coverage has the potential to push non-work related consumption to 90% in some cases, forcing increased IT troubleshooting and leading to a misallocation of budget and reduced productivity.

To mitigate this impact, Blue Coat suggests three essential capabilities for network administrators:

1 - Visibility: get a real-time, granular view of network traffic

To manage application traffic on networks you must be able to see it in a granular fashion that lets you differentiate internal applications from web-based applications and content. Information that traffic is coming via Port 80 or Port 443 doesn't help you to understand what's impacting internal applications. Your visibility into network traffic must be granular enough to let you identify it by flow (business vs. recreational) and in real time, so you can see traffic bursts, respond quickly, and see instant results.

2 - Control: ensure the ability to prioritize and segment network traffic

Granular visibility of network traffic is only half the equation for managing the network. To ensure that business-critical applications meet users' expectations, maintain productivity, and are not impacted by recreational traffic, traffic must be segmented and prioritized. Control should build on visibility by enabling network administrators to partition traffic and prioritize by business value.